the embers are fading faster than I know

September 28, 2009

About a month ago, my son decided that he wanted to be - more than anything in the world - Green Lantern for Hallowe'en. More precisely, he wanted to be Green Lantern from the Justice League Unlimited DVD series that is currently serving as video-based crystal meth for all three of my kids.

And so, in my ongoing quest to enable my children to be all they can be... I dutifully went ahead and tracked down a kid-sized Green Lantern costume online, and ordered it.

Today, when we came home from school, it was awaiting on our front doorstep.

My son was thrilled when I opened the package and revealed its contents to him — he couldn't get it on fast enough. Granted, it's about twice as big as he is (note to self: don't order one size up next time), but he didn't care. He was a fake-muscled dude in black and emerald, with a cool Green Lantern logo on the middle of his chest and a new belief in his heart that he could fly.

For a moment, he was crestfallen to discover that the costume didn't include a Green Lantern power ring. I can hardly blame him for this, as the ring is for all intents and purposes the source of Green Lantern's power. But once he moved past that disappointment, he grabbed hold of the costume's cardboard packaging and studied it carefully, comparing it against his own costume, projecting himself onto the tall, strong, confident Green Lantern he'd watched on TV and now saw on the cardboard before him. His smile growing broad. His eyes growing full with wonder and joy.

And then, something else caught his eye. He looked at the picture, then looked down at himself. Then looked at the picture again, and finally looked at me.

"Daddy," he asked, his voice clear and earnest, his eyes wide and guileless, "Can I paint my face black now?"

September 20, 2009

Hey! Hi! How are you? Wait! I forgot to use an exclamation point there! Dammit!

So. This has been one gangbuster of a week for about a zillion different reasons, and insofar as that I tend to post posts (that's right... I said it and I meant it) on this site with blue moon frequency, I'm going to lump a bunch of stuff together here and let fly, thereby emptying the remnants of what's rattling 'round my skull onto your desktop like a child spilling a 6000 piece Lego set onto the floor after you JUST. FINISHED. PICKING. THEM. ALL. UP.

• WORKWork is natural. Work is fun. Work is best when it's one-on-one. By which I mean: this is the week that I got confirmation that the person I had been suspecting for a couple of weeks might be trying to throw me under a bus... was, in fact, quite actively trying to throw me under a bus. The fact that virtually an entire department of professionals immediately aligned with me to shut this individual down and make it clear that if anyone deserved to be looking up at the underside of a full-sized magic bus... well, it wasn't me... that was kind of nice, but also did little to diminish the suck factor of discovering that somebody in a position of power was actively trying to deflect blame for their fuckup onto me. It's really, truly and honestly not a good feeling.

Anyhow. That was on... Wednesday? I can't remember. Oh, how the days blur together when you're having fun! Wednesday ended with a face-to-face between me, my immediate supervisor (as a contractor, I'm okay with the fact that I'm basically faceless hired help and everyone is my boss) and the bus-thrower-underer (trademark pending)... which began with the bus-thrower-underer basically launching into a half-crazed accusation that my supervisor was the devil, and ended with the bus-thrower-underer smiling and happy and yelling down the hall at me, "You're doing a great job!"

Bipolarity is fun.

Thursday brought more drama not worth going into, but I will point out that during the early afternoon hours my supervisor stopped by my gray, soulless little cube, looked at me, put an open, lukewarm bottle of pinot grigio and a paper cup on my desk, raised an eyebrow, and then walked away without saying a word. Which was actually pretty cool.

And yes, I drank about half of the bottle. (and shared the rest with my neighbors)

Then, on Friday, my supervisor stopped by my gray, soulless little cube, asked if I was okay, and when I replied with my standard "I'M AWESOME!!!" she said in a surprisingly pleading tone, "You're not leaving, are you? Please don't leave." Which was nice. And then she told me that they're thinking about offering me a full-time position, which is nice to hear, but at the same time... uh... I think I 100% definitely without a question prefer to be a contractor there instead. So... we'll see what happens.

• HOMEFriday was also, as it happened, my 10th wedding anniversary. True story. I won't launch into any kind of long, flowery descriptions of my love for TheWife - hell, if you're in the mood for sentimentality you can check out my 7th anniversary thing here - but I will share my AWESOME! 1800flowers.com! STORY!

Earlier last week, I ordered this giant bouquet of red roses (and threw in a little box'o'chocolates, which I heard life can be like, for good measure) to be delivered to TheWife's office on Friday, as part one of my three-pronged strategic plan of attack. My expectation was that I'd get this phone call from her on Friday morning, all "Oh my God, I thought we weren't doing anything, these are beautiful, everyone is jealous, you are the Cadillac of husbands, blah blah blah," and I'd get a minute or two of feeling good about myself out of it as a result.

By 11am, I hadn't heard anything, so I checked online for the delivery status. Nothing. I started getting antsy. By noon - after I'd just talked to TheWife and she hadn't mentioned my awesomeness as a husband, and the 1800website showed no updates, I called their customer service line. I got someone live, who checked in, didn't see anything, then tried calling the florist. No answer. I told him that this was an anniversary bouquet and my wife would be there until 4pm, so as long as it was there beforehand we'd be fine. He sent the florist a message to that effect, noted it in the account log, and said he'd shoot me an email with updates. About 10 minutes later I got an email: the order is on the truck and being delivered.

2:30pm. I talk to TheWife again... nothing. The online account status doesn't even show that it's being delivered, despite the email. So I call the 1800# again, and get an automated message saying that the order is out for delivery. I'm starting to get agitated.

3:30pm. I call TheWife and finally ask: did you get anything delivered? She says: no. And there's no receptionist there today, so she does a complete lap of her floor (her company has an entire floor in a small building), asks everyone... and nope: nothing. So I call back the 1800 customer service line, and get through to a live rep. He's very understanding, tries calling the florist - twice - and still gets no answer. I tell him that this order is for our 10th wedding anniversary, which is THAT DAY. If the order comes after she leaves... it's a waste. He says: if the order doesn't arrive by 4pm, I can call back the next day and get a refund. I thank him for his help, and presume that the florist is just going to blow it.

She calls me from the train station at 4:25pm. She says she stayed in her office until 4:15, then did another complete loop... and there was no bouquet. Fine. I'm frustrated, but fine: I'll call the next day and get my refund.

At 4:30pm I get an email from 1800flowers.com saying the florist delivered the order to the receptionist at 3:59pm.

At 4:39pm one of TheWife's colleagues emails her to say that the flowers just arrived.

Hmm. The florist told 1800flowers that they delivered the package to the receptionist at 3:59pm. After being told earlier in the day they had a 4pm deadline. But. There was NO receptionist. And there were no flowers as of 4:15pm. And, according to my wife's colleague, they weren't delivered until about 4:35pm. THE FLORIST LIED TO COVER THEIR ASS.

At 5pm, as I'm cooking and dealing with the Comcast guy who's fixing the cable connection in my house that's been fucked up for... uh... about six months, I call 1800flowers to complain that the florist lied to them and to me. They tell me: our policy is that delivery hours are until 7pm. You're out of luck.

I blow a fucking gasket.

Eventually, they tell me to call back the next day and get the refund processed. Fine.

(FYI: I called back on Saturday, and they told me I was out of luck. I blew a gasket again, and they told me to call back on Monday because they're just a satellite office and don't have the authority to issue a refund in this case. If I get the runaround on Monday - after they FAILED TO DELIVER MY 10TH ANNIVERSARY BOUQUET AFTER I GAVE THEM ALMOST 4 F#$@ING HOURS TO GET IT INTO MY WIFE'S HANDS WITH MY FIRST CALL ON FRIDAY and they tell me that 7pm is a reasonable delivery hour to a business office on a Friday after THEIR OWN SYSTEM SAID IT WAS BEING SENT OUT FOR DELIVERY AS OF 12:30PM, WHICH WOULD HAVE GIVEN THEM ENOUGH TIME TO DRIVE IT FROM NEW YORK TO BOSTON AND STILL GET IT THERE BY 4PM... WHICH IT WAS NOT then I'm pretty sure I'm going to find out where the corporate offices of 1800flowers.com is located and get all kinds of unpleasant.)

Anyhow. Then TheWife picked up our kids and came home, and I served her pan-seared, pepper-crusted filet mignon in a maple syrup/balsamic reduction with oven-roasted root vegetables and a very, very nice bottle of Ferrari-Carano Trésor, followed by homemade Snickers/peppermint schnapps brownies. And gave her something shiny and glittery. And she said, "I thought we weren't doing anything" and I said, "You always say that, and I always do something" and thus, our 10th wedding anniversary was celebrated.

• POLITE FICTIONSI hinted about this a while back, and have been tweeting about it like crazy, but in case you only check me out here... cIII from The Goat and Tater and I brought together a ton of other badass interweb people and started up this site called Polite Fictions, which is basically a running story in which each writer contributes 4 paragraphs or so, and then hands it off to the next writer, who contributes another 4 paragraphs or so, and then passes it along and... well, you get the idea.

And I'm too lazy to see if I linked to this before, but I also posted something at DadCentric that's actually about a lot of things is probably among the better things I've done. Then again, my judgment is questionable at best, so make of that what you will.

• AND ONE OTHER THINGOne other thing I've been meaning to mention for a while is that I finally got around to reading To: -- which is the book that Ms. Picket and Carolyn Online wrote and published via Blurb back in July... it's basically an epistolary romance, except instead of romance it's about the budding of a strong, deep and lasting friendship between two people who've never met, and instead of wax-sealed scrolls or stamped, postmarked and airmailed letters it's an exchange that happens via web posts and emails. The first part of the book is largely a series of web posts in which we learn who these two women are and we see the brief, easy commenting and quick email exchanges that characterize so many interweb acquaintanceships. It's an often breezy and fun read. About a third of the way in, however, the book suddenly takes on new dimension as a legitimate friendship begins to form and their emails start to provide real and fascinating illumination, not just in the sense of what's behind the stories we read in their posts but who these people really are: their lives, their hopes and fears, and - most importantly - their relationships with their husbands and children.

And I've got to be clear: they are brutally honest and forthright in these emails - especially about the frustrations of parenthood and marriage - and I'm both astonished and amazed at their bravery in choosing to publish them. And to be even more clear: it's this bracing honesty that balances their always-strong sense(s) of humor to add real depth and resonance to the book as a whole.

Their relationship - like To: itself - starts out as one thing... and evolves into something far more meaningful and important by the end. It's a really interesting piece of work, and while I had to wonder at how it might be streamlined and reworked in parts for mainstream publishing, I also - by the time I was done - had no doubt that I was reading something worthwhile.

I am enormously impressed anytime someone I know - even in the vague and tenuous way that people "know" each other on the interweb - puts in the time, effort and focus to produce a book. That Darcy and Carolyn actually produced something that left me wanting more... well, this may be an understatement, but honestly? That's pretty damned cool.

September 08, 2009

She was the mother of a friend and classmate of TheHurricane's. She was the wife of our friend JiF. She was the kind and brilliant soul who'd turned her powers of clinical focus onto her son when he was diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder, working night and day to develop a program that transformed him from an almost non-verbal child with severe behavioral issues into an impossibly bright and sensitive boy — and and the good friend who'd helped us find our way after our own son was diagnosed and we found ourselves trying to navigate some of the intricacies of public special education programs.

She was a stranger on the interwebs who became a face, and then a voice, and then a good and true friend.

And then we discovered: she was a closet alcoholic of severe and profound proportions.

She was hospitalized. Repeatedly. Went in and out of programs. Came home, tried to piece her life back together... and failed. Repeatedly.

By springtime, her life - her former life - was a memory. She was estranged from her husband. Her job... I don't even know. It's our assumption that her job (and let's be clear: this is the kind of job that people spend decades studying and working and preparing for — and she was the one in a million who was actually qualified for it) had vanished sometime over the winter. And finally, she lost any claim of legal custody to her own son.

It was a heartbreaking spiral. We witnessed it only in fits and starts, but it was never less than painful, never less than entirely awful. We were never less than incredulous at the idea that someone we knew and liked and wouldn't have hesitated to trust with our own kids could fall apart so completely, so spectacularly, so terribly and irrevocably.

A couple of weekends ago, we met with JiF for the first time since the spring. It was a playdate, of course — a chance for his son and TheHurricane to refamiliarize themselves with each other. A chance for JiF to kick back and relax, if only for a few hours.

I'll admit: we were apprehensive. Not that we weren't curious - of course, we were curious - but at the same time, we were afraid of what we'd hear of ElF, of what had become of her, and of overstepping boundaries and respecting his privacy. We would not bring it up, we decided. If he wants to talk about it... he can talk.

He wants to talk. JiF is an interesting guy, and one of his greatest strengths is the fact that he is completely forthright and matter-of-fact about things. He doesn't dance around the fact of the matter: he simply accepts it as fact, asks others to do the same, and plows forward to the best of his abilities. It doesn't make him a perfect guy, but it makes him a good guy doing his best under surreal circumstances.

"It's been an eventful few months," he says.

We give him the half-smile; supportive, appreciative of the understatement, welcoming him to say more if he wanted to say more.

"She's been in and out of so many programs at this point that, literally, I've lost count. She was in Atlanta for one, Texas for another, she's been in and out of McLean several times... it's a true vicious circle. She gets well enough that she has the legal right to check herself out, then she comes back here and starts circling the drain again."

"I think I told you this, but I had to go to court to get sole custody of (my son). Which was granted, with surprisingly little difficulty — I mean, to be clear enough to a court that you, as a mother, need to be legally barred not only from custody but from visitation with your child without supervision? To anyone with a rational mind, that's a pretty clear indication that things need to change."

"But what's becoming more and more clear, the farther into this things go, is that it's tough to figure out where the alcoholism ends and the mental illness begins. I mean, there have been times - multiple times - over the past year where I've found myself talking to my wife and it's like talking to a complete stranger. And I find myself just so confused. Wondering: did the person I knew ever really exist?"

"When we were first going out, she talked about a time in college when she'd had a breakdown and taken some time off from school, and her Dad came out and stayed with her and helped her for a while. But it was something that even at that point seemed like it'd happened a long time ago, and it was never something we got too much into or that I tried to understand too closely. And now? Now it's like: that was a huge red flag, and I missed it completely. Because her troubles then, and everything now... it's all connected. All of it. And it's like (my son and me) just wandered into the middle of it."

"She's got an apartment now. I actually set it up for her, when she was off in (a treatment program in another state), just so she'd have a place to live. Because we just couldn't have her at the house any more. It was, literally, like every other week the police were at our house because of one thing or another and... you know, we became those people. And it finally got to a point where I couldn't live like that, and I couldn't let (my son) live like that. Which is why I went to court, and got custody and a restraining order. But I couldn't just put her out on the street, you know? She's got an apartment over in (a nearby town), but it's like every time I have to go there..."

He shakes his head. Takes a long draw from his beer. It's the last weekend in August; a hot afternoon, and we are sitting in our back yard. An umbrella partially shades us from the sun. Nearby, four children sprint back and forth across our too-long grass, splashing in and out of a plastic kiddie pool, screaming with joy and wild energy.

"The place in Texas... she somehow signed herself out and just walked out the front door. With nobody there to pick her up, no plan of where she was going to go." He looks at us. "That's not the way it's supposed to happen. I called to check in on her, and they said, 'She left two days ago.' They found her a couple of days later — she had literally been wandering the streets. Her blood alcohol was seven times the legal limit."

"Jesus Christ," I say.

"Exactly," he kind of laughs. Because what else can you do? "That's one of the strange things about being that deep into alcoholism: that much alcohol would kill you or me. Literally: we would die. But her body has adapted." He pauses; takes a breath. "Seven. Times."

"I don't even know what to say," my wife offers.

He shrugs. "There's not much you can really do," he says. "That's what I'm learning. Every once in a while, when she's a week or two into one of these programs, I'll have a conversation with her, and she'll be lucid and her eyes will be clear and it's suddenly like: 'Hey! I remember you!'"

(he's half-smiling as he says this. they're the saddest words we hear.)

"So... she got a puppy."

"What?" I ask. I say it as kind of a laugh.

"I know. Seems like a great idea, right? She called me up and said, "I got a puppy!" Like this was a good thing, something to be excited about. Anyhow, maybe a week later I get a call from this friend of hers - this woman, this very nice woman, who she actually met in a program - and she says, "I haven't heard from ElF in a few days, but I don't want you to be worried. Because I have the puppy."

"The puppy," my wife says.

"Exactly. I tell her, well, that's great. I'm glad you have the puppy. But what about her? And she asks me to go and check on her, because she's... well, she's not that close by. So I say, fine. I drive over there, and after I park I see that her garage is open. And the door inside from the garage is open. And as I walk in, I'm completely paranoid for... actually, for several different reasons. There's all kinds of things I can find inside, and none of them are good. I'm concerned, but at the same time I'm thinking, 'Did somebody break in?'"

"Anyhow. I walk in and... she's there, and she's a mess. Incoherent. I mean, seriously incoherent. Just complete 'raving lunatic' time, you know? And it's clear she hasn't showered in days, and it's just..."

He shakes his head again.

"So I called for an ambulance. And they took her to McLean, and committed her - for all intents and purposes - and that's where she is now. Once again, it turned out her blood alcohol content was .4-something, and it literally took days before she was anything remotely close to coherent."

"Anyhow. That's where she is now."

He looks at us, we look at him. His expression is resigned. Calm, logical. Resigned. I'm sure we look entirely stricken.

Our children run circles around us. They are covered in torn blades of grass and warm sunshine and youth and laughter. Water beads off their skin like tears.

We sit on our chairs, listening to them. We look at each other, then we glance away. The bottle in my hand is growing warm. The fourth chair at the table sits empty.

Do You Hear What I Hear?

Def Leppard: HysteriaIt only took me 25 years, but I finally picked up Hysteria the other week... and it's everything I hoped and feared it would be. Does it sound awesome? Holy hell yes, it sounds awesome — every explosive drumbeat, chiming/echoing guitar lick and Joe Elliott high note seguing perfectly into a creamy, harmony-driven chorus sounds like the word "awesome" would sound if awesome was a sound. But is it also stupid? Well... yes. Honestly, the lyrics on this album are nothing shy of appalling — bottoming out with immortal "You've got the peaches, I've got the cream" couplet from Pour Some Sugar On Me. (cringes) But when you turn off your brain and allow yourself to get caught up in the gorgeous awesome of all that sound... the appeal of Def Leppard becomes crystal clear.

Alcest: Les Voyages de L'ameHonestly, I'm running out of ways to describe this music to you. I can call it shoegaze-metal, but that may not mean a thing to you. I can tell you it fuses the aggression and (occasional) blood-curdling screaming of one genre with the gorgeous melodics, atmosphere and graceful, haunting vocals of the other. I can tell you that the fact that it's (mostly) in French doesn't do a damned bit to detract from the breathtaking beauty and emotional resonance of the music, which stands up to the impossibly high standards set by Alcest's first two albums. I can tell you all of this and more, but unless you give yourself the opportunity to actually listen to what they've created... you'll never really understand why Alcest may be my favorite band in the world right now.

Billy Squier: Essential Billy SquierI finally got my act together a picked up some Billy Squier. And you know what? His best songs hold up beauuuutifully. This is Rawk music with a capital R, and there's not a damned thing wrong with that. Everybody Wants You, In The Dark, The Stroke, Learn How To Live... I can't believe I waited this long to bring this music back into my life. Awesome.

Hammock: Longest Year EPThere are few things more frustrating than trying to describe the gorgeous, evocative and profoundly atmospheric post-rock music of Hammock without A) resorting to clichés that, while not necessarily inaccurate, do little to accurately describe the listening experience; or B) having the musical vocabulary to adequately describe just what it is about these lengthy, largely wordless compositions that hypnotizes and moves me so profoundly. So I'll just say: imagine a film. No words; just images. Flashing, semi-grainy images of someone from your past — impossibly beautiful, vibrant and full of life. Someone lost to you forever. Imagine that feeling, of love and impossible longing and desperate, hopeless desire to recapture that moment and make it last forever. Now hunt down the title track to this EP, close your eyes, and listen. And you will know: this is the music for that feeling.

Reading is Fundamental

Jane Roper: Double Time: How I Survived - and Mostly Thrived - Through the First Three Years of Mothering TwinsI really, really wish that Jane Roper's terrific Double Time had been around when I needed it, because it's exactly the kind of thing I was desperately hoping to find when my wife and I discovered we were having twins: a warm, funny, immensely personable and eminently readable take on how someone like me navigated the discovery and aftermath of "Oh my god! It's twins" without crashing on the rocks and sinking to the bottom.
Of course, there's a lot more to the book than just kid/parenting stuff - Roper devotes a sizeable amount of real estate to discussing in sobering and often moving terms her struggles with depression and bipolarism, which are further complicated by the myriad challenges of being a twinfant parent - but make no mistake: twin wrangling is at the heart of the book, and is the engine that drives not only the story but Roper's impressive ability to wrench honestly, truly funny observations from the kind of parenting scenarios that might kill a lesser person.

Darwyn Cooke: Richard Stark's Parker, Vol. 1: The HunterThank you, Adam P Knave, for making this a part of my life. Richard Stark (a pseudonym for the late grand master of crime fiction, Donald Westlake) produced a series of Parker novels back in the day — creating a dark, violent antihero who's been brought to life (to varying degrees of success) on the big screen in everything from Lee Marvin's Point Blank to Mel Gibson's Payback. It's a very different proposition from the incredibly funny caper stories that brought Westlake much of his success as a novelist, and perhaps that's why he created a separate pen name for the series... but as far as deep, dark, delicious noir fiction goes, Parker is prime stuff. All of which is to say that it's great source material for Darwyn Cooke, who brings the first Parker novel to life here in a comics-style format that does absolute, compelling justice to the sudden violence, moral ambivalence and creeping sense of doom that made The Hunter such a landmark in noir fiction. Wonderfully moody and incredibly evocative of the story's time and place, Cooke's recreation of the story via sequential art makes for a wonderfully fast and furious read... and, in the end, left me hungry for me. Great stuff.

Bob Mould: See a Little Light: The Trail of Rage and MelodyAs someone who's been a fan of Bob Mould's music for more than 20 years - tracing his career from Hüsker Dü to his solo career to Sugar and then back again to solo life - I approached his memoir with a mix of anticipation and trepidation. Why? Because you never know whether someone's ability to write compelling stories in song form will translate to a longer-form narrative. Fortunately, it turns out that my anticipation was justified – because Mould delivers a consistently interesting and engaging account of his life both within and outside of music that offers insight into the eclectic experiences that shaped the rage and melody of the subtitle. From his often-stormy personal life (including his private and public experiences as a gay man) to his relationships with bandmates to his foray into the world of writing for professional wrestling (it's true!) and beyond, it's a story that translates well across 400+ pages... and while you're aware that you're getting only one side of the argument when he talks about his battles with lovers, record labels, Grant Hart and more, Mould tells it all in a voice every bit as compelling and relatable as that offered by his singing.
Would I have enjoyed this as much if I hadn't been familiar with his music? Probably not — and having a pretty good context in terms of his music and the scene(s) he's been a part of over the years is almost certainly a prerequisite for enjoying this book. That said: it's a really good read, and if his music has earned even a small place in your heart, it's a worthwhile investment of your time.

Erik Larson: ThunderstruckConsidering how much I'd enjoyed two of Larson's earlier books - Isaac's Storm and the completely wonderful Devil in the White City - it took me a hell of a long time to get around to reading Thunderstruck. Honestly, there was a pretty good layer of dust sitting on the jacket when I finally picked it up and went to work a couple of weeks ago. Why? Because, for no reason I can really explain, I was afraid I'd find it kind of dull.
Unfortunately, it turns out my apprehension was well-justified. I can certainly understand why Larson was attracted to the subject matter: he parallels Marconi's invention of radio with the then-sensational Crippen "Basement Murder" in London, and how the two intersected in the mid-Atlantic, as Crippen attempted to flee to America. Which sounds interesting, right? Wrong. The Marconi storyline is extremely well-researched, and Larson does his best to bring it to life, but ultimately it comes across as something that is clearly far more important than it is actually interesting. Marconi himself: smart, driven, not a nice guy, and not a terribly compelling subject. And Crippen? Who killed his harpy wife and fled the UK with his secretary/lover? Is a cypher... a man universally described (as is clear through Larson's impeccable research) as a small, quiet, listless little creature. And while I spent the entirety of the book hoping for a revelation in which we come to understand how such a non-entity came to commit such a strange and gruesome murder, I came away frustrated -- as no such revelation ever appears. Larson (like the police) knows Crippen did it, but we never really understand how (functionally) or why (in a character-motivation sense).
In the end, I found myself wishing that I'd left the book collecting dust. Very disappointing.

Brian Boone: I Love Rock 'n' Roll (Except When I Hate It): Extremely Important Stuff About the Songs and Bands You Love, Hate, Love to Hate, and Hate to LoveBrian Boone is a funny, funny, funny man... and I was happy as hell (if unsurprised) to discover that the same sharp, sarcastic humor he brings to his blog and tweetstream manifests throughout this book. Now, I'm aware that I'm more or less the ideal audience for this book - I love music, I love lists, and I love sharp, sarcastic humor - but that doesn't mean that the content is appealing only to those who fall into the somewhat limited blue lobster demographic.
Let me put it to you this way. One section of the book is called "Succinct Information In Column Form," and features an item with a number of options beneath the question "Little girl object of fancy or little girl object of fancy that is also the title of a Mariah Carey album?" The answer, per Brian Boone? "Mariah Carey has released Rainbow, Charmbracelet, Butterfly, Daydream and Glitter. She has not yet released albums titled Unicorn, Princess or Sparkles."
If you're the kind of person I think you are, that just made you cackle. And that also makes you the kind of person who would enjoy the rest of the book — which I certainly did.